Saturday, August 23, 2008

What's in a name?

A Canadian criminologist who consults for our own Department of Homeland Security has come up with a novel solution to solving gang crime in his country - just change the name given to the criminals from gangbangers to "terrorists", which then would allow Canada's government to use all those sweet new warrantless powers available to them under their Anti-Terrorist Act to put the suspects straight into the gulag, depriving them of most of their legal rights.

"He said portions of the federal legislation would allow law enforcement to act swiftly in detaining suspects and seizing their property and possessions, including things like bank accounts and weapons."

We've only this week discussed how, barring a major change in policy, the FBI is shortly going to be allowed to begin investigations of ordinary American citizens "without any clear basis for suspicion". It's only a matter of time before they use their advisor's bright ideas to additionally agitate for the ability to seize everything a "suspect" in this country owns as well, regardless of whether there's any evidence at all to justify doing so.

There's already more than a million people on the "terror watchlist". How long before we're all on it, leaving every one of us subject to these sorts of draconian measures?

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